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Show 50 CHARACTERISTICS OF WATERCOURSE reasons, the precipitation is quite small, and that a large number of streams in the state are, and always have been, dry during a portion of each year. When these facts are taken into consideration it is evident that the words "natural stream" as used in the constitution were intended to be used in their broadest scope and include within their definition all the streams of the state supplied in the manners above referred to, including tributaries and the streams draining into other streams. The Utah Supreme Court declared:144 We must know judicially that the water in a river between any two points is not accumulated there solely from the contributions thereto from marginal sources, but that the major portion thereof comes by natural flow from upstream sources which have fed the channel itself, step by step, clear back to its ultimate source or sources. The entire watershed to its uttermost confines, covering thousands of square miles, out to the crest of the divides which separate it from adjacent watersheds, is the generating source from which the water of a river comes or accumulates in its channel. Rains and snows falling on this entire vast area sink into the soil and find their way by surface or underground flow or percolation through the sloping strata down to the central channel. This entire sheet of water, or water table, constitutes the river and it never ceases to be such in its centripetal motion towards the channel. Any appropriator of water from the central channel is entitled to rely and depend upon all the sources which feed the main stream above his own diversion point, clear back to the farthest limits of the watershed. * * * Definiteness and Permanence It is the consensus of western courts that there must be a definite and permanent source of supply, though not necessarily unfailing at all times. However, under the widely varying topographic and meteorological conditions that are found in the West, there is no uniform concept of either definiteness or permanence of source. Some treatment of this variability appears in the discussion under "Stream," above. Inasmuch as a stream of water can flow only if it has a source or sources of supply, definiteness and permanence of the stream are bound up inextricably with these attributes of its source of supply.145 The discussions unavoidably overlap. An appropriate quotation to insert at this point is taken from a decision of the Supreme Court of Texas, which said:146 144 Richlands In. Co. v. Westview In. Co., 96 Utah 403, 418, 80 Pac. (2d) 458 (1938). 145 In 1906, the Kansas Supreme Court found that a new stream exhibited the element of permanence, and stated that in that event the particular source was immaterial. Rait v. Furrow, 74 Kans. 101, 106-107, 85 Pac. 934 (1906). It was enough that there was "a living source-a steady supply." Apparently permanence of the source was deduced from the finding that there was a permanent stream. 146Hoe/v. Short, 114 Tex. 501, 506, 273 S. W. 785 (1925). |